Noctua has added to their A-series by giving us a collection of smaller fans. Their line now runs from 40mm to 140mm. But do the smaller fans hold up their end? Do they perform as well for their size as their larger brethren do? Noctua sent us 40mm, 80mm and 92mm fans. Let us run them through their paces and see how they do.

Noctua is well-known for its premium fans, the complete set of accessories that accompany each of these fans, and the elegant packaging that protects them all. These fans are no different, but they come with Noctua’s A-series packaging, the accessories labeled with model numbers, and the A-series suite of acoustic and aerodynamic features built in to each fan.

It makes sense that Noctua would build 80mm and 92mm fans. In compact systems, some case fans are 80mm and 92mm; some CPU heatsinks use 92mm fans. But why do they need a 40mm fan? Noctua told Vortez:

Most of the 40mm and 60mm fans we sell in retail are used to replace broken or noisy units in devices such as network or storage solutions. This is also why we came up with the 5V version because some of these need 5V instead of 12V. This is also why we include the OminJoin adaptor set because it allows you to run the fan on proprietary connectors without doing any soldering.We sell in bulk or customised packaging to our industrial clients of course.

Curious about this OmniJoin fastener? You can read about it in the NF-A4x10 5V user’s manual (PDF). That’s another thing about Noctua’s A-series fans: they all come with Users Manuals, and those manuals can all be accessed on line PDF’s. That allows you to download them and enlarge them to whatever magnification you need. That’s a feature you will begin to appreciate as you advance into your 40’s. Noctua follows this accessibility feature as a standard practice.